A Childhood Quite Like This
by kesque
Summary: You are on the carousel of the festival inside me you hover around, your skirt and your hair flying Mere seconds between finding your beautiful face and losing it. -Nazim Hikmet


**A/N: Hey guys, haven't posted here in awhile but getting a notification that someone had reviewed one of my pieces inspired me to start on something again. This is something I just wrote in like the last thirty minutes and I'm posting it despite the fact that I probably shouldn't. So anyways, was inspired to write this, don't expect too much out of it. It's a rough re-entry to the world of the Avengers. **

He thinks of her as he watches the carousel blend into nothing more than a blur of neon light. His sunglasses shield his eyes despite the present night time state. A couple of gangly teenagers, faces splotched with acne, mumble something about him being a tool and he ignores them, crossing his arms instead. He can't distinguish her as the ride goes faster and faster, the melody like that of a music box. All he can make out is the soft cotton of her dress. It's white and while her face is of a vestigial nature, the fabric keeps him close to her.

Then there's that shriek of red, whirling about the spiraled poles that ascend in a synced movement. Somehow he can just tell that she's smiling. She never had a childhood quite like this. Natasha never tried to win the giant teddy bear nor had her father yell at the man who runs the booth for ripping them off. She never ate so much cotton candy she puked all over the brown grass or cried for her mother when the Ferris wheel stopped. She has no need for material things, she has no father, her body is a well oiled machine and she cries for no one. At least he believed that. But now watching her blend into the air as he inhales the familiar scent of stale popcorn and funnel cake, he realizes that when one doesn't have a childhood, then they are doomed to forever be a kid at heart.

When the ride finally slows to a stop, he feels a strange coat of excitement soak into his palm. There's something jittery and tight clamping at his ribs. Without knowing how he got there, he finds himself waiting for her at the exit gate, like his mother would when he was just a boy. There's that half smile he's come to cherish brimming between her cheeks. She stumbles towards him, disoriented and slips over the grass to him. He catches her, his marred hands meeting the white flesh of her shoulders.

Her smile seems to widen and he flushes but he's a best-of-the-breed assassin and isn't allowed to be caught off guard for long. They move along to through the rest of the carnival and because of his carnie heritage he manages to win for her an atrocious pink creature. Surprisingly Natasha sucks at ski ball and they nearly fall onto each other laughing when he gets a temporary tattoo stenciled on the back of his waist. Sometimes his fingers tumble against her's and they mesh together like crushed blades of grass.

On the Ferris wheel, they watch the waxing moon and he feels the presence of her thigh against his so keenly. He turns over to her as the ride freezes at the peak, and her body goes rigid as the slight tilt slows. Her hand finds his, nails pressing into his knuckles and offering him a few pinpricks of heaven.

Someone says something and the other offers a barbed remark that conceals laughter. He watches the way white light caresses her soft cheek bones and he wants to reach out and touch her. He wants to touch the cold woman he's fought side by side who he fell in love with the first time he saw her rip out a man's heart-metaphorically that is. But he's a little scared by this laughing Natasha, this blushing girl who looks at him like he's the one who hung that moon in the sky.

Her green gaze meets his and he realizes that he's not Clint Barton to her right now. Here in a world of deep fried food and squealing toddlers, she is a child and he is her fatherbrotherteacherfriend. He can't break the glass between them tonight; ruin this fantasy of childhood with such adult things as love. Tonight he is content to be a spectator, to read her story and help her write it.

He calls her sweetheart in a way that makes his rugged face boyish and she calls him a jack ass. They sleep in the back of his pickup truck instead of going home, too drunk on a summer night. In the twilight he counts her hairs as she sleeps on his chest, and when he reaches 200 he notices that fireflies have taken to the horizon. He nudges her awake, rubs her sleepy eyes for her and together they chase down fleeting relics of the sun before they release the last bits of childhood they'd had stored up in a jar.

_I think of you_

_and I feel the scent of my mother_

_my mother, the most beautiful of all._

_You are on the carousel of the festival inside me_

_you hover around, your skirt and your hair flying_

_Mere seconds between finding your beautiful face and losing it._

_What is the reason,_

_why do I remember you like a wound on my heart_

_what is the reason that I hear your voice when you are so far_

_and I can't help getting up with excitement?_

_I kneel down and look at your hands_

_I want to touch your hands_

_but I can't_

_you are behind a glass._

_Sweetheart, I am a bewildered spectator of the drama_

_that I am playing in my twilight._

-Nazim Hikmet: **I Think Of You **


End file.
